Reliance Petro, the petroleum business unit of Reliance Industries Limited, has embarked upon retail expansion binge in a big way to become the biggest player in the private sector.
Marketing advisor of Reliance Petro S K Kapoor told PTI that by the end of the current financial year, the company plans to increase the number of retail outlets from 300 to 1000.
Kapoor said although Reliance was putting up most of the ROs along state and national highways, the company was also looking at premium locations in various metropolitan cities and towns across the country.
Reliance Petro also supplies petro products to the various oil companies in the public sector from its refinery at Jamnagar in Gujarat.
Kapoor said the present arrangement in this regard would remain valid till March 31, 2005.
The Jamnagar refinery was one of the biggest in Asia with a refining capacity of 33 million tonnes per annum, out of which 12 mtpa was diesel, three mtpa was petrol, 2.5 mtpa was LPG, and the balance was naphtha, paraxylene and petcoke consumed directly by the petrochemicals plant of the company.
Besides land-based ROs, the company is also planning to introduce mobile outlets for which trucks would be pressed in service carrying 10 kilolitres of petroleum products each.
For this, the company had approached the concerned authorities for getting the necessary approvals.
Reliance Petro would also retail petro products in barges, which would have the capacity to carry 500 kilolitres. He said that the self-propelled barges would ferry along inland waterways to meet the fuel requirements of fishermen and others.
The company had already commissioned a floating diesel outlet in the Namkhana region in the Sunderbans area where fishing trawlers would be able to fulfill their fuel supply requirements from the water itself.
Talking about exports, he said that the company was exporting 60 per cent of diesel and 70 per cent of petrol to USA and other countries on long-term contract basis.
The entire LPG production was being sold to the PSUs, he said.
Reliance Petro imports all its crude requirement.
Asked about the price, which it charges, he said that the company sells the petro products at par with those of PSUs.
